Covid-19 Daily Bulletin

31 Jul

31 July 2020

A series of daily updates for CHO members regarding relevant updates pertaining to Coronavirus from home and abroad.  

Key Announcements     

• Separate households have been  banned   from meeting each other indoors in Greater Manchester, East Lancashire and parts of West Yorkshire following a spike in coronavirus cases.  
• A number of care homes in England are having to  delay   the resumption of visits because of a lack of coronavirus testing for staff and residents .  
• Pubs, cafes and restaurants in  Leicester  can  reopen   from Monday.  Whilst the borough of Oadby and Wigston on the outskirts of the city is moving completely out of local lockdown.  
• Bournemouth   Police  have stated they are  ready to set up  roadblocks , create diversions and close off sections of Bournemouth beach to prevent a repeat of last month’s chaotic scenes as a heatwave sweeps parts of the UK.  
• A total of 15 charities have  warned   in an open letter that workers will be forced to choose between health and their jobs when restrictions ease.  
• Britain had the worst death rate of any country in Europe from the pandemic, official figures  showed  for the first time yesterday.  
• Downing Street has restored Luxembourg to the list of countries requiring travellers to quarantine for 14 days when they arrive in the UK because of a surge in coronavirus cases in the country. 

Regional/ Devolved     

• The rules on how many people can meet outdoors in Wales will be eased next week, the Welsh Government has said.  From Monday groups of up to 30 can meet, and it will not matter how many households they are from.    
• A spike in coronavirus cases in Wrexham  is being monitored “very carefully” but a local lockdown is not yet being considered, Wales’ chief medical officer has said.    
• A further three people have tested positive for Covid-19 as part of a cluster of cases in the Inverclyde area.   
• The total number of positive cases involved is now 11.   Amazon has confirmed that a member of staff, based at a warehouse in Gourock, is in quarantine. An M&D Green Pharmacy in Port Glasgow is also linked to the cluster.  
• Gyms, swimming pools and indoor sports courts in Scotland could reopen on 14 September, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced.  
• Scotland’s schools have been given the go-ahead to reopen from 11 August by the country’s first minister.  

International     

• Donald Trump has suggested November’s presidential election be postponed, saying increased postal voting could lead to fraud and inaccurate results.  
• The US economy shrank by an annual rate of 32.9% between April and June, its sharpest contraction since the second world war, government figures revealed on Thursday.  
• Germany has reported 870 more confirmed coronavirus cases, according to a tally from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.    
• The governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, has warned that the Japanese capital could declare a state of emergency if the coronavirus outbreak continued to worsen, after new cases reached a record single-day high of 463.  
• China recorded its highest daily total of new Covid-19 cases since early March, many of them in the north-western region of Xinjiang.  
• The Australian state of Victoria recorded its second worst day of the pandemic, with 627 new cases.  

Stakeholders      

• Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, says the tightening of restrictions announced late last night are “modest steps”.    
• The Trades Union Congress (TUC) said it would be “heartless and reckless” for bosses to demand the immediate return of shielding workers on 1 August, when the government will no longer advise them to stay at home and will no longer pay them statutory sick pay.  
• Labour is to launch a “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs” campaign today over mass job losses caused by coronavirus, saying the gradual removal of the employment furlough scheme from the start of August is a “historic mistake”. 

Unconfirmed reports     

• Many  of England’s biggest businesses are set to  defy  the government’s push to get workers back into offices in August, with many big businesses sticking to home working arrangements or delaying a partial return until September at the earliest.